The story of the 60-year-old Nationwide Library is a metaphor for, on the one hand, the worth that Nigeria locations on information, and alternatively the sorry state of the nation itself.
Established by an Act of Parliament in 1964 with headquarters in Lagos, it moved with the Federal Authorities to Abuja in 1995. President Olusegun Obasanjo’s authorities awarded an N8.9 billion contract for a befitting constructing to Reynolds Building Firm in 2006 to be accomplished inside 4 years. Near 20 years after, the edifice stays unfinished. In impact, there isn’t a construction acceptable to meet the imaginative and prescient and mission that nationwide libraries serve in different climes.
On the event of the diamond jubilee of the organisation when it ought to have a lot to have fun and to showcase as a Nigerian repository of information, the Nationwide Librarian and Chief Govt of Nationwide Library of Nigeria, Prof. Chinwe Anunobi, had trigger to lament the non-completion of its headquarters that in impact hampers the achievement of its mission, and the resultant limitation to deepening the studying tradition amongst Nigerians. On the nation’s mental panorama, that is one ‘nationwide monument’ so obviously lacking to the purpose of embarrassment, to adapt the feelings of Anunobi.
A nationwide library, says Wikipedia, ‘is established by the federal government of a nation to function the preeminent repository of data for that nation.’ If purpose-built and geared up, Nigeria’s nationwide library ought to, because it proclaims in its mandate, function ‘the mental reminiscence of the nation.’ Alas, that Obasanjo failed to finish the undertaking he (properly) initiated, and that successive governments additionally failed to finish it, converse a lot in regards to the disheartening priorities of Nigerian leaders in issues of information specifically, and schooling generally.
Libraries will not be solely static repositories of information but in addition function handy infrastructural services to amass it and rework private and communal lives. However not solely residents however their governments profit from using libraries; higher knowledgeable residents are simpler to control due to their already heightened capability to self-govern, they’re additionally higher geared up so as to add financial worth to themselves and to their international locations. In addition to, writes Carl Becker, ‘the overall diffusion of information and studying by way of the group (that good libraries allow) is important to the preservation of free authorities.’
In his well-written essay on the private advantages of studying titled: ‘We Are What We Learn’, studying fanatic and researcher–author, Francis Onaiyekan, posits that studying ‘counsels us’, ‘expands the frontier of our thoughts’ and ‘refines us’; it ‘equips us to suppose deeply, broadly, and choose extra finely [so] that we take extra clever choices, make wiser selections, and act from…‘inclusive pondering’ [that sees] the bigger image of points’.
‘We chorus from narrow-mindedness, hasty judgment, and stereotyping and (we) are saved, thereby from the illness… of bigotry [and other presumptuous sins].’ The author concludes that ‘studying deepens us spiritually, and raises our private values to a better airplane [so that, the more widely we read], ‘the extra glorious’ we change into.
International locations around the globe, irrespective of monetary energy, place a precedence on establishing and sustaining useful nationwide libraries, and even past that, public and different particular objective libraries and ‘studying rooms.’ It’s estimated that there are about 2.8 million libraries on the planet, together with 2.2 million faculty libraries.
A nationwide library is a testomony to the worth a rustic locations on the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of information.
It additionally serves different features such because the issuance of Worldwide Customary Guide Numbers (ISBN) and Worldwide Serial Numbers (ISN). International locations wealthy, and never so wealthy, set up and nurture their very own, from the Nationwide Library of Afghanistan (earlier than the Taliban) and Angola’s Nationwide Library, by way of Bahrain’s Shaikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa Nationwide Library and the Nationwide Library of Burkina Faso, to Japan’s Nationwide Weight-reduction plan Library, the Vatican Library, and the Library of Congress in america that reputably held by 2022, 171 million supplies in numerous format, on 1,350 km of cabinets.
International locations of the world that respect the worth and unqualifiable advantages of well-educated citizenry set up libraries inside the best attain of their individuals.
Norway, with a inhabitants of about 5.26 million has 740,000 libraries, averaging 7.10 individuals to a library and Australia’s 8.773 million sturdy inhabitants enjoys the providers of 1,372,000 libraries, Cuba’s 11.48 million residents are served by 399,000 libraries averaging 28.7 individuals to a library.
The UK’s 66.02 inhabitants have entry to about 3.9,000 libraries, america gives 17, 218,000 to serve its 325.7 million residents, and South Africa’s 56.72 million individuals has 1,504,000 libraries with one for about 38 individuals (www.researchgate.web).
Printed determine reveals that there are 316 libraries in Nigeria together with the branches of the Nationwide Library. Whereas this determine might not be taken as conclusive (there are practically 600 tertiary establishments with, assumedly, appropriately geared up libraries) there could be little doubt from cursory remark that there will not be sufficient private and non-private libraries to serve the nation’s over 200 million residents.
It’s not troublesome to conjecture a powerful correlation between nationwide literacy ranges and the provision of studying sources. Cuba has a literacy degree of 99.71 per cent, Norway 100 per cent, United Kingdom, United States Australia 99 per cent every and South Africa 94 per cent. Nigeria’s literacy price is rated solely 59.57 per cent.
To be continued tomorrow.
